How Salesforce.com plans to stay high in the clouds

Salesforce.com co-founder Parker Harris discusses key product growth areas for the company, the challenges of innovating, the future of development and flexible infrastructure, and what the cloud market itself will look like years from now.

One of four co-founders, Parker Harris has been a quietly powerful force in the success of Salesforce.com, which has grown to nearly $7 billion and earned a top spot in the CRM market since launching in 1999. Harris leads all product development, data centers and technology for the cloud company and has built the underlying platform that supports an increasing array of products and a huge community of customers around the world.

In this interview with IDG U.S. Media Chief Content Officer John Gallant, Harris talks about key product growth areas for Salesforce.com, how customer expectations of cloud are changing, and what the cloud market itself will look like in years to come. He also discusses how to run infrastructure at vast scale and how Salesforce.com’s approach to software development is changing. Harris also explores the challenges of innovating in a market where nimble cloud startups are always nipping at this early cloud leader’s heels.